


To Mend and Make Do

by perletwo



Series: Trope Bingo Fills [1]
Category: Legion of Super Heroes
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Curtain Fic, F/M, Gen, Legion Lost, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perletwo/pseuds/perletwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawnstar feathers her team’s nest wherever they go. Wildfire misses the point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Mend and Make Do

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [trope_bingo.](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org) Prompt is Curtain Fic. My card is [here.](http://perletwo.livejournal.com/234888.html) Thanks to cindergal for the quick beta work!

“What’cha sewing, Dawny?” 

Wildfire leaned over the back of Dawnstar’s lumpy armchair, and she cut a cool glance upward toward him. “Quilting.”

“Okay, what’cha quilting?” His tone through the containment suit’s speakers made it quite clear that if the disembodied energy being had a mouth, it would have been smiling indulgently.

“A throw pillow.” Dawnstar kept her voice neutral and her eyes on her handiwork. Shifting her work to one hand, she flicked two fingers toward a pillow form propped against the side of the armchair.

“You know we can’t take much stuff with us when we go, right? Which could be at a moment’s notice, us buggin’ out,” he pointed out. “Gotta travel light.”

“It’s not for us,” she replied, taking up her stitching again. “I plan to leave it here in the motel when we go.”

“…You’re doing all that work just to leave it behind? On purpose?”

Dawny sighed. “Yes, Drake. As I have at every motel we’ve stayed at. Had you not noticed?”

“Well, things were happening pretty fast and furious the first two days,” he admitted. “And Tyroc kept me pretty busy working on our salvaged tech at that point. For all the good it didn’t do us.”

“In the meantime, I was using my small share of our currency fund and my abundant free time to do this. It keeps me from going insane while I’m cooped up indoors – I know we need to minimize the risk of a winged metahuman being seen in this superstitious era, but -”

“- but it makes you crazy when you’d rather be out there in open sky,” Wildfire finished, and rubbed her shoulders lightly with both hands. “Okay, whatever works, babe. But why leave it behind?”

Dawnstar sighed again, and tilted her head thoughtfully. “As payment for all we’ve taken from the people of this era. A small gesture of goodwill.” Above her Wildfire made a skeptical sound intended to replicate the clearing of a throat. “It’s as I said before, Drake. Every time we use Tellus’ telepathy to cadge a free room or meal, or go into their minds to make them see us as we wish them to, we do them harm. A small harm, but it’s a real harm, and a smudge on our own spirits too. And it adds up, the longer we’re trapped in this century.”

She lifted the fabric square at arm’s length to study her hand seaming. “This is not much, but it’s something I can do, and relative to our resources, maybe not even such a small thing.” She smiled. “I’ve felt something of a kinship with the women of my tribal ancestors here on Earth, since we’ve been stranded. For most of a century the women of the Nations would make things like this along the way once they were displaced from their homes. Blankets, pillows, baby layettes, cooking cloths. They’re museum pieces now, the ones that survive, I’ve seen them. Practical things, small things, but they took the trouble to make them beautiful. Each one unique, each one individual. Each is something that even a thousand years in the future still says, ‘We were here. We existed. We mattered. Don’t forget us.’”

Drake gave her shoulder a squeeze. “C’mon, Dawny. We’re Legionnaires. We’re not going to be forgotten, even if we don’t make it home to our own time. We’ve got a bigger legacy to leave than a few scraps of cloth.”

For a moment Dawnstar was silent, rage and hurt squeezing at her throat. Finally she lay her work carefully over the chair arm, stood and faced him.

“I see. Then perhaps we should both find something better to do with our time, Wildfire.” Her steely glare all but burned holes in his visor before she turned and stalked out of the motel room.

“Hey! Dawny - !” But the steel door had already slammed shut in her wake.

Drake’s computerized voice box gave out the frustrated growl that only the woman he loved could get out of it. Sighing, he circled the chair and dropped into it heavily, only at the last minute remembering to check his descent so the weight of his suit wouldn’t break it. He picked up the cloth square and studied it.

The pillow top was finished and topstitched; she had finished the edges on the two pieces of the back, pinned one to the front and started on a side seam. Wildfire lifted the plain backing to check the design and groaned again.

Pieced carefully together on a deep blue starfield background was an orange five-pointed star with a stylized pair of wings above it – the symbol on his original containment suit and his own Legion mission board icon. But the wings were much more detailed and intricately feathered, like Dawnstar’s own. In a top corner was a much smaller appliqué of a yellow starburst; her Legion icon, placed there as a signature.

Drake groaned and replaced the basting pins. Then he turned the fabric in his hands until he could focus on the seam Dawnstar had started. He gingerly plucked the sewing needle from the corner she’d tucked it into, gave the thread an experimental tug, and wove its tip carefully into place for the next stitch.

She’d said it herself: people have been doing this for hundreds and hundreds of years, after all. How hard could it _be_?


End file.
